NASA vows to release air safety data

NASA vows air safety data to be releasedGriffin concedes $11 million study poorly managed, still needs work

KATHRINE SCHMIDT, Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

Published 5:30 am, Thursday, November 1, 2007

WASHINGTON — Under withering bipartisan criticism, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin apologized to Congress on Wednesday for the agency having said it could not reveal data from a federal air travel safety survey because the information could have worried passengers and pinched airline profits.

At a testy hearing before the House Science and Technology Committee, Griffin conceded "NASA did not manage the project well" and pledged to reveal results of the $11 million study, which reportedly found that near-collisions, runway interference and other safety problems occur far more often than previously believed.

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But NASA's top official angered committee members by telling them that his agency was not prepared to release the information immediately and would do so only after officials had a chance to scrub the data to make sure that none of the pilots who was interviewed could be publicly identified and that confidential commercial data would be protected. He pledged to deliver the results by the end of the year.

"The survey results that we can legally release will be released," said Griffin. "The fact that people at NASA misspoke does not mean that we can compromise our statutory requirements" for confidentiality.

Faster timetable sought

Several committee members were unimpressed with
Griffin's
words, which conflicted with testimony the committee got from an aviation safety specialist and two project officials.

"This appears to be a mess of NASA's own causing," said Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis. Rep. Jerry Costello, D-Ill., wanted a faster timetable for release of the study.

"Shouldn't it be a priority of your agency to scrub this and get it out to the public immediately?" he asked.

Although NASA is best-known for its space program, it also has conducted extensive surveys of aviation safety issues over the years. The program in question, known as the National Aviation Operations Monitoring Service, conducted more than 20,000 interviews with airline pilots, asking them how often in the last 60 days they'd run into certain problems such as equipment and air traffic control trouble.

Doubts about data

Committee chairman
Bart Gordon
, D-Tenn., called the hearing after NASA denied an open records request from
the Associated Press
for the data. NASA told the AP it was refusing to release the information because the results "could affect the public confidence in and the commercial welfare of the air carriers and general aviation companies."

Gordon told the NASA boss that his agency's stated reasons for rejecting the information request were "both troubling and unconvincing."

Griffin was contrite: "That was the wrong thing to have said." At the same time, he expressed doubt about the validity of the survey results, saying some data discrepancies and statistical formulas needed to be checked before being released.

"I would not want the flying public to believe this data in the form in which it appears today," Griffin said.

But a panel of researchers familiar with the project offered a different view during the last hour of thehearing.

NASA's former head of the research project, Robert Dodd, told lawmakers that the survey was based on "outstanding science," extensively tested and ready for meaningful analysis.